Data for Development : An Evaluation of World Bank Support for Data and Statistical Capacity
This evaluation’s objective was to assess how effectively the World Bank has supported development data production, sharing, and use, and to suggest ways to improve its approach. This evaluation defines development data as data produced by country...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/705581506620506441/Data-for-development-an-evaluation-of-World-Bank-support-for-data-and-statistical-capacity http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28485 |
| Summary: | This evaluation’s objective was to
assess how effectively the World Bank has supported
development data production, sharing, and use, and to
suggest ways to improve its approach. This evaluation
defines development data as data produced by country
systems, the World Bank, or third parties on countries’
social, economic, and environmental issues. At the global
level, the World Bank has a strong reputation in development
data and has been highly effective in data production. It
produces influential, widely used data and cross-country
indicators that fill important niches, benchmark countries,
and stimulate research and policy action. The World Bank has
also taken a prominent leadership role in global data
partnerships so far. However, the World Bank needs to
determine its future role carefully because the global
partnership landscape is becoming more uncertain—as old
partnerships phase out, the complementarity of new
partnerships is unclear. This makes the World Bank’s future
role especially pivotal because the sustainability of
funding from global data partnerships at both the national
level and for some global data efforts is at risk. Without
sustained funding, past progress will be in jeopardy, as
observed in some countries where data quality worsened when
trust fund support ended. At the national level, the World
Bank has been mostly effective at fostering its client
countries’ data production through its own financing and
through financing from small trust fund grants. It has been
less effective in promoting data sharing; while the World
Bank has used its leverage in some of its client countries,
it needs to do a better job at encouraging other countries
to share data. The World Bank has been even less effective
in promoting data use by governments and citizens. The World
Bank’s systemwide approach to building the capacity of
national statistical organizations yielded significant
successes in countries where it was deployed, and it should
now add a focus on building subnational capacity and
strengthening client countries’ administrative data systems.
The World Bank needs to make sure it clearly understands
when and how big data can complement traditional data in
answering key development questions related to its mission,
and use big data analytics appropriately to underpin its own
decisions and to ensure that it supports its country clients
effectively in big data use. The World Bank still needs to
address the implications for organizing big data work
internally, entering into corporate agreements with private
providers (typically the producers of big data), and
seriously considering and addressing privacy and ethical
concerns related to big data use. |
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